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SUNDAY ANGELUS of Pope Benedict XVI on the 19th November 2006 about contemplative life on the feast of the Presentation of the B.V. Mary on the 21st November.
Needed: monasteries for meditation
On Sunday, 19 November, prior to the recitation of the Angelus with the faithful in St Peter's Square, the Holy Father delivered the following Reflection, translated from Italian.
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
The day after tomorrow, 21 November, on the occasion of the liturgical Memorial of the Presentation of Mary, we will be celebrating Pro Orantibus Day, dedicated to remembering cloistered religious communities. It is an especially appropriate opportunity to thank the Lord for the gift of the numerous people in monasteries and hermitages who are totally dedicated to God in prayer, silence and concealment.
Some may wonder what meaning and value their presence could have in our time, when there are so many situations of poverty and neediness with which to cope.
Why "enclose oneself" for ever between the walls of a monastery and thereby deprive others of the contribution of one's own skills and experience? How effective can the prayer of these cloistered Religious be for the solution of all the practical problems that continue to afflict humanity?
Yet even today, often to the surprise of their friends and acquaintances, many people in fact frequently give up promising professional careers to embrace the austere rule of a cloistered monastery. What impels them to take such a demanding step other than the realization, as the Gospel teaches, that the Kingdom of heaven is "a treasure" for which it is truly worth giving up everything (cf. Mt 13: 44)?
Indeed, these brothers and sisters of ours bear a silent witness to the fact that in the midst of the sometimes frenetic pace of daily events, the one support that never topples is God, the indestructible rock of faithfulness and love.
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